“It is necessary to reinvest in the nutrition sector in our country and reorganize it. It is a good thing that finally two ministries of Health and Agriculture, of Food Sovereignty and of Forests are dealing with it together, because to relaunch it it is essential to invest in the promotion of a culture of multi-level nutrition, which defines the priorities to be addressed and also sheds some light on the abuse of terms such as nutritionist and prevention which, if not contextualised in a vast context such as this, risk generating even more confusion”. These are the themes raised by the ADI, Italian Association of Dietetics and Clinical Nutrition during the three working days of the first National Conference on Nutrition promoted by the Ministry of Health and concluded today in Rome.
“In recent years, the definition of nutritionist has been compared to anything related to nutrition or a healthy lifestyle. A term that has no legal value in this sector and which risks generating even more confusion in the population, the warning that comes unanimously by all the professional orders, scientific societies and categories gathered in these three days of work is therefore that we can finally put a stop to the abuse of this terminology”, explains Lucio Lucchin, past president of Adi.
“The nutrition culture it is also done with the correct use of words. Even when it comes to prevention, it should always be specified what it is aimed at and for what scope, in order not to run into generalizations that would risk trivializing the message and making the objective fail. Activating a synergistic culture of nutrition also means defining the priorities to be addressed and planning the management of future emergencies. Malnutrition is one of the priorities to be managed immediately in all the various settings from hospitals, nursing homes, rest homes and home care”, adds Lucchin.
The Adi, which during the three days of work in Rome brought the contribution of ten experts in clinical and preventive nutrition, also asked the Ministry of Health to regain its central role in the technical table on nutritional safety to coordinate and strengthen the regional tables, now present in only 11 Italian regions.
“There is still a lack of homogeneity of clinical and preventive nutrition services on the Italian territory, which unfortunately has worsened with the Covid-19 pandemic”, comments Barbara Paolini, president of Adi.
“A State-Regions Conference of 24 November 2016 called for the ‘presence of a competent medical referent for clinical nutrition in at least 60% of the hospitals and competent in preventive nutrition in at least 60% of the Local Health Authorities by 2017’ and by 2018 the ‘presence of an operational unit of dietetics and clinical nutrition every 600 thousand/1.2 million inhabitants’. To date, there are still insufficient numbers that need to be filled in order to concretely intervene on efficient and effective management of nutrition”, he concludes the president.